oh dear
Infections estimated to be doubling every 9 days in England. Clearly the restrictions are working… 
I’m probably wrong but dragging this out for months would to me seem to cause as much financial heartache as a full lockdown for a few weeks/month but with more sickness and deaths.Have France and Germany not come to the same conclusion and is the UK gonna have to do so as well.
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The numbers actually prove it.
The UK has been one of the worse hit in financial terms in Europe if not the world. Dragging it out as you say, failing to get a grip of it and basically bumbling along in some twisted way of trying to save money (while diverting as much as possible into the private sector and Tory party donors) you basically end up in a far worse position than you would have.
I find the comparison with New Zealand extremely interesting to be honest, and for that matter Ireland. Even Germany is a good example (and probably the most comparable nation in terms of size, economy etc.) In economic terms the UK has performed awfully in comparison to these.
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The German version is no lockdown, it’s more like a no-fun-downer.
Apologies…it’s kinda true though. Not entirely sure if that will be enough to get the growth down significantly, but if it is - it’s relatively mild on the economy overall and the businesses closed down get a fairly decent compensation.
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Basically, all the treasure spent on the first set of lockdowns was squandered by the undisciplined behavior of Western people. Meanwhile, in Asia… See the future coming.
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The evidence overwhelmingly suggests you are not wrong. It is the clear lesson of the pandemic - there is no real trade-off between public health and the economy. Perhaps in terms of weeks, but the economies with the best recoveries are those that have been able to shut down outbreaks and get to an equilibrium of measures to restrain growth. Virtually every Western democracy has made a mess of this to some degree or another - exceptions are countries like Denmark and Finland, so far anyway. Even a country like Germany has now made that error despite getting it largely right the first time around.
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Exactly how much of Greece are each of them going to be given? 
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9.3k new cases in the 24 hours here (for a population of roughly 8.5 millions). That’s a 79% increase compared with the same day last week. At federal level, they have done not much else but to unify a bit the different distanciation rules, and decided to close bars and night-clubs, bigger concert halls, and sport games are again without public. Amateur contact sports, chorals and any prolonged activities with more than 15 people are forbidden. Masks have now to be worn outside too, when in crowded streets and places (what is a crowded street or place?.. nobody knows).
Given that these rules are basically what has been in place in most areas of the country since two weeks or more (apart from the mask outside thingy), I can’t see much change happening in the next week. New cases will continue to go up, albeit at a slightly lower rhythm. Meanwhile our hospitals already creak under the pressure, so we are told at least…
The political system doesn’t want a new semi-confinement, and the reason is very simple: if they do that at federal level, they’ll have to support the people and economy in financial terms again, as they did in March/April. But that is apparently a no-go, and so it’s very predictable what will happen: we’ll continue to increase our numbers at fast pace. Who knows where that will stop…
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What’s your critique of the German handling now - too little too late?
Yeah, late more prominently, plus the same problem we have here, regional patchwork due to the provincial/Lander governments respectively. The fact that Merkel is saying that tracing can only account for 25% of cases right now is startling - Germany was the gold standard outside Asia. When it dropped below 60%, it was time to do something dramatic.
I don’t know in detail what for example the rules are for masks - a national mask requirement all summer might have gone a long way.
A question for you - what is the thinking in Germany as to why the old East Germany is in such a different state of contagion?
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Yeah, told you those state governours (Ministerpräsidenten) are mostly incompetent twats.
East Germany - I think there are regions where it’s starting to go up as well. But some of the East German states are not very densely populated by Central European standards. Ironically the fact that so much of the youth left many provincial areas in the East might have helped them with the second wave, somewhat counterintuively, as young people have been the ones that really fuelled/accelerated the second wave. In the first wave I think there was an element of luck involved as well, as their neighbouring countries (Eastern Europe) weren’t hit as hard as the Southern/Western neighbours. But those are just my thoughts, maybe I’m completely wrong.
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Government action can help, but at the end of the day the vast majority of individual people must do the right thing. The West, with its freethinking populace and with its youth not taught to respect anything but whatever is in their head this second, was always going to have a problem. Perhaps our culture will learn from it and get some improvement. I hope so.
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That’s true. Although, speaking of Germany for example - it doesn’t really help when both certain politcians as well as certain virologists, doctors etc. have been mostly busy spreading confusion/doubts and meet a media landscape that likes a bit of drama/confrontation.
If you can easily find experts and other public figures that signal 'don’t worry young and healthy people, this isn’t really about you, all these measures are way too much/panic anyway- it’s just about old and sick people and we should focus on ‘protecting’ them [as in completely isolating them, which doesn’t work anyway] - is it really surprising that some people go for the ‘easy’ and more ‘fun’ option?
Seriously, atm it’s a bit like ‘Pick your favourite virologist’.
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I didn’t think you were a hotel owner from Torquay…
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All this moonlighting as a lawyer.
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Are we seeing the countries who were hitting big numbers of cases first time round,once again disproportionally hitting those big numbers.If so,any ideas why?
I didn’t check the Corona figures in last two months. I didn’t have any illusion that the pandemic is under control, I was just too tired living with such uncertainty. But your posts in last few days made me take a peek.
UK 23K
Italy 26K
Belgium 21K
Poland 20K
USA 24K
India 31K
Damn it, these are peak pandemic figures. I wish all of you and your families remain safe, my praters are with you.
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We’re not there yet. The rate of increase is frightening.
Report published to day estimated that 100k people are infected in England alone.
But we couldn’t see this coming apparently. 
That’s per day, isn’t it? 100k new infections per day. Total infected I thought I heard the radio say was over half a million?
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